Geoprocessing considerations for delimited files

Use geoprocessing tools to access and write to delimited text files. Any geoprocessing tool that accepts a table as input can read a delimited text file, unless the tool modifies the input table. In addition, any geoprocessing tool that can create a table can write directly to a delimited text file. Geoprocessing tools provide read-only input support and output support for the following delimited text file formats:

  • Comma-delimited text files (.txt, .csv, and .asc) in which a comma character (,) separates each value
  • Tab-delimited text files (.tsv and .tab) in which a tab character separates each value
  • Pipe-delimited text files (.psv) in which a pipe character (|) separates each value

The first row of a text file contains the column headings, and the subsequent rows contain coordinates and attributes. The following is an example of a comma-delimited text file:

x,y,ID,color
8.6,5.6,001,blue
99.3,77.0,002,blue and red
8.01,44.3,003,orange

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